The Nature of the Programs
“Tu todavía no tenes iPhone?! Pobrecita!”[1]
I had run into a high school acquaintance at the university I was conducting
research in and as we exchanged numbers she had looked down at my phone, raised
her eyebrows, smiled and pronounced that verdict. At the moment I had laughed
it off, but after further consideration I realized this was yet another
demonstration of the excess and materialism present at these two institutions I
was examining, UVM and UGF[2].
Between the rows of expensive cars parked outside (often
with their respective drivers and the occasional group of private bodyguards)
and the throngs of well-dressed students playing on their smart phones, it was
hard to think of Guatemala by its “third-world” label. Considering that most of the
students I was interviewing were coming from poor, rural, “underdeveloped”
areas, I wondered how they experienced this enormous disparity. How did their
notions of what it meant to be “poor” change with this experience? These are
two questions that I frequently found myself discussing with my informants over
the summer and that have shaped my understanding of poverty in Guatemala City.
In addition to anecdotes such as the encounter with my old classmate, official estimates from international organizations make the economic aspects of poverty and disparity in Guatemala extremely evident. For example, the World Bank claiming that although Guatemala has the largest economy in Central America it is amongst the “Latin American countries with the highest levels of inequality, with poverty indicators—especially in rural and indigenous areas—among the highest in the region,”[3]. While there are certainly other types of poverty occurring (see below), the lack of material wealth was one of the most visible signs of scarcity experienced by most of my informants. Whenever I would ask about the difficulties they (the students) faced when adjusting to life in the City and their universities, most of them would immediately recount the shock they had experienced when they realized just how little they had in comparison to their classmates. One of my informants, Jorge, had even remarked that he had never realized how comparing himself to those who were better off created a feeling of “need” for material possessions:
“For me it was not necessary to have a car when I was living in La Reforma, I didn’t dream about having a car because I didn’t need one, but when I come to the city and I see that other people have one, I begin to feel this need: ‘I also want a car, right’ or I begin to se people with computers: ‘I don’t have a computer’ and maybe before I didn’t need any of this, but this comparison begins to create necessities that, perhaps, we just didn’t have before.” (My translation)[4]
Although material poverty might initially be the most apparent form of poverty when comparing the ITA and JBG[5] students to their classmates, there are other areas in which they are strongly disadvantaged. The first of these is education: even though many—if not most--of the scholarship students were coming from low-income private schools and institutions, all of my informants (including the directors of the scholarship programs) spoke at length about the academic difficulties scholarship recipients faced when entering these top private universities in Guatemala City. According to those I interviewed, it took an average of around two years for the incoming scholarship students to be “nivelados”[6] with the academic standards of their respective institutions. For a group of students who were previously at the top of their class and who were chosen for these programs based on their outstanding academic performance, this sudden shift to the bottom of the intellectual pyramid had a serious impact on their lives. I heard stories of sleep deprivation, depression and in the case of one girl, Carmen, grave physical illness. Though she had survived child leukemia, she was still not cleared from what her doctor called “the risk period,¨ and thus her immune system was still weak. After only half a semester in the scholarship program, Carmen[7] began to notice dark spots appear on her skin and she began to experience an increasing number of nosebleeds and fainting episodes. Fearing the cancer had returned, she visited a doctor only to discover that the unhealthy habits she had unknowingly adopted to keep pace with UVM’s academic standards were affecting her already fragile immune system. At this point she had seriously considered dropping out of UVM both as a consideration of her health and as result of the frustration that built up from months of struggling. She recounted how she had felt undeserving of this competitive scholarship and had blamed herself for her lack of success rather than the inadequate education system of the country.
[1] “You don’t have an iPhone yet?! Poor you!”
[2] Names have been changed to protect privacy
[3] http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/guatemala/overview
[4] “Para mi no era necesario tener carro cuando yo estaba en La Reforma, yo no soñaba con tener carro, porque no me hacía falta, pero cuando vengo a la ciudad y veo que otras personas lo tienen, empiezo a sentir esa necesidad: ‘yo también quiero carro verdad’ o empiezo a ver a las personas con computadora: ‘yo no tengo computadora’ tal vez antes no me, no me faltaba, pero esa comparación empieza a crear necesidades que de repente uno no las tenía.”
[5] The scholarship programs within UVM and UGF
[6] leveled
[7] pseudonym
In addition to anecdotes such as the encounter with my old classmate, official estimates from international organizations make the economic aspects of poverty and disparity in Guatemala extremely evident. For example, the World Bank claiming that although Guatemala has the largest economy in Central America it is amongst the “Latin American countries with the highest levels of inequality, with poverty indicators—especially in rural and indigenous areas—among the highest in the region,”[3]. While there are certainly other types of poverty occurring (see below), the lack of material wealth was one of the most visible signs of scarcity experienced by most of my informants. Whenever I would ask about the difficulties they (the students) faced when adjusting to life in the City and their universities, most of them would immediately recount the shock they had experienced when they realized just how little they had in comparison to their classmates. One of my informants, Jorge, had even remarked that he had never realized how comparing himself to those who were better off created a feeling of “need” for material possessions:
“For me it was not necessary to have a car when I was living in La Reforma, I didn’t dream about having a car because I didn’t need one, but when I come to the city and I see that other people have one, I begin to feel this need: ‘I also want a car, right’ or I begin to se people with computers: ‘I don’t have a computer’ and maybe before I didn’t need any of this, but this comparison begins to create necessities that, perhaps, we just didn’t have before.” (My translation)[4]
Although material poverty might initially be the most apparent form of poverty when comparing the ITA and JBG[5] students to their classmates, there are other areas in which they are strongly disadvantaged. The first of these is education: even though many—if not most--of the scholarship students were coming from low-income private schools and institutions, all of my informants (including the directors of the scholarship programs) spoke at length about the academic difficulties scholarship recipients faced when entering these top private universities in Guatemala City. According to those I interviewed, it took an average of around two years for the incoming scholarship students to be “nivelados”[6] with the academic standards of their respective institutions. For a group of students who were previously at the top of their class and who were chosen for these programs based on their outstanding academic performance, this sudden shift to the bottom of the intellectual pyramid had a serious impact on their lives. I heard stories of sleep deprivation, depression and in the case of one girl, Carmen, grave physical illness. Though she had survived child leukemia, she was still not cleared from what her doctor called “the risk period,¨ and thus her immune system was still weak. After only half a semester in the scholarship program, Carmen[7] began to notice dark spots appear on her skin and she began to experience an increasing number of nosebleeds and fainting episodes. Fearing the cancer had returned, she visited a doctor only to discover that the unhealthy habits she had unknowingly adopted to keep pace with UVM’s academic standards were affecting her already fragile immune system. At this point she had seriously considered dropping out of UVM both as a consideration of her health and as result of the frustration that built up from months of struggling. She recounted how she had felt undeserving of this competitive scholarship and had blamed herself for her lack of success rather than the inadequate education system of the country.
[1] “You don’t have an iPhone yet?! Poor you!”
[2] Names have been changed to protect privacy
[3] http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/guatemala/overview
[4] “Para mi no era necesario tener carro cuando yo estaba en La Reforma, yo no soñaba con tener carro, porque no me hacía falta, pero cuando vengo a la ciudad y veo que otras personas lo tienen, empiezo a sentir esa necesidad: ‘yo también quiero carro verdad’ o empiezo a ver a las personas con computadora: ‘yo no tengo computadora’ tal vez antes no me, no me faltaba, pero esa comparación empieza a crear necesidades que de repente uno no las tenía.”
[5] The scholarship programs within UVM and UGF
[6] leveled
[7] pseudonym
Moreover, since high academic
performance is a prerequisite for the scholarships, many students coming out of
the public school system are completely excluded from the very opportunity to
apply for help. In one instance I was interviewing a former public school
elementary teacher, Ricardo, who had decided to come to the City to pursue
higher education but had not scored sufficiently high on any of the
standardized admittance tests to attract any scholarship program. Rather than
give up, Ricardo had taken out loans to pay for his tuition and was forced to
live in a tiny, bleak room he rented in one of the poorest zones of Guatemala
City[1].
His measly living arrangements and lack of proper nourishment combined with his
lack of academic preparation meant that Ricardo struggled to pass all of his
courses at UGF and was constantly considering the easier option of giving up
and returning to his village to teach again. Although he was (fortunately)
admitted to the JBG program after two years, many other students are not this
lucky and are thus systematically excluded from the opportunity of higher
education by their lack of economic and educational capital.
Finally, the students faced a third, equally serious type of poverty: the lack of social capital. In Guatemala City’s small business sector, knowing people is often the only way to apply for the top jobs in companies. For scholarship students coming out of the country’s top business and engineering schools (UVM and UGF respectively), applying for a good job is not as simple as sending in a resume or attending a career fair. In general, the only way to move up in a company is either to be connected (or in many cases related) to owners of the business, to be from a well-known family, or to have a prestigious diploma from a Western university. For these reasons, it was not surprising that all but one of the graduates of both scholarship programs I interviewed had obtained a job through either former professors, as in Carmen’s case, or through donors and organizers of the programs. In the case of Jorge, he had managed to be hired by the scholarship organization itself, and was now in charge of running the program. What these cases suggest is that education itself is not merely all that is needed to achieve socioeconomic mobility and leave the cycle of poverty behind.
The promotional pamphlet for the UVM program reads “Changing the World one Student at a time” (in english) and it encourages potential donors by claiming that by sponsoring a student “[the student’s] lives, their families, and their communities are forever changed.” However, is it a bit far fetched to make this claim? Are these limited educational opportunities truly working against poverty, or are they merely creating a limited niche for those lucky few who were selected? Taking into account that only a very limited number of the students graduating from these programs return to their communities—while the vast majority participate in the massive brain-drain of the countryside—the idea that these higher educational programs are revolutionizing Guatemala’s world order do indeed seem unconvincing. It is more likely, as Wallerstein suggests, that development programs such as these not only serve “to reinforce the existing system of stratification” as is exemplified by the fact that donors to these programs choose the major that the recipient of their scholarship must study, but also evidence the idea that “only a minority can ‘make it’ within the framework of the world system” (Wallerstein 1974).
[1] Scholarship recipients in the two programs I investigated were placed in a catholic residency located in a nicer area of the City, were given three meals a day, their own room and had their laundry done for them. In addition they also received a stipend and health insurance, and were given an allowance for books and utensils.
Finally, the students faced a third, equally serious type of poverty: the lack of social capital. In Guatemala City’s small business sector, knowing people is often the only way to apply for the top jobs in companies. For scholarship students coming out of the country’s top business and engineering schools (UVM and UGF respectively), applying for a good job is not as simple as sending in a resume or attending a career fair. In general, the only way to move up in a company is either to be connected (or in many cases related) to owners of the business, to be from a well-known family, or to have a prestigious diploma from a Western university. For these reasons, it was not surprising that all but one of the graduates of both scholarship programs I interviewed had obtained a job through either former professors, as in Carmen’s case, or through donors and organizers of the programs. In the case of Jorge, he had managed to be hired by the scholarship organization itself, and was now in charge of running the program. What these cases suggest is that education itself is not merely all that is needed to achieve socioeconomic mobility and leave the cycle of poverty behind.
The promotional pamphlet for the UVM program reads “Changing the World one Student at a time” (in english) and it encourages potential donors by claiming that by sponsoring a student “[the student’s] lives, their families, and their communities are forever changed.” However, is it a bit far fetched to make this claim? Are these limited educational opportunities truly working against poverty, or are they merely creating a limited niche for those lucky few who were selected? Taking into account that only a very limited number of the students graduating from these programs return to their communities—while the vast majority participate in the massive brain-drain of the countryside—the idea that these higher educational programs are revolutionizing Guatemala’s world order do indeed seem unconvincing. It is more likely, as Wallerstein suggests, that development programs such as these not only serve “to reinforce the existing system of stratification” as is exemplified by the fact that donors to these programs choose the major that the recipient of their scholarship must study, but also evidence the idea that “only a minority can ‘make it’ within the framework of the world system” (Wallerstein 1974).
[1] Scholarship recipients in the two programs I investigated were placed in a catholic residency located in a nicer area of the City, were given three meals a day, their own room and had their laundry done for them. In addition they also received a stipend and health insurance, and were given an allowance for books and utensils.